Visionary
by Dreams2Paper11
Summary: Elfling!Harry. Needless to say, Harry never had a particularly pleasant childhood. He was never shown familial love or welcomed and treasured like any child should be. At least he's got a second chance to carve out a good one in a different universe, far, far away from the trials and toils of his own dimension. (That is, if he can deal with a brewing war and a new Dark Lord.)
1. Prologue: The Arrival

**AN: So my muse has been in a slump lately, and I've really gotten immersed in the LOTR fandom, but I still love Harry Potter, so this was the end result. Please bear with me! The last time I saw the films was like, a couple years ago, and I just checked out the trilogy (apparently its not a real 'trilogy') today to read and brush up on my LOTR knowledge. **

**Updates: Probably shorter chapters, most likely never exceeding 4000 words. I try to be grammatically correct, with good spelling, so quality comes first. I cannot promise fast updates, I am a notorious procrastinator, not to mention I have work and hours of homework every night, so some flexibility on the readers' part would be nice.**

**Also, I'm winging this. Completely. **

**Enjoy!**

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Harry's body hurt.

His eyelids were crusted together, the lashes intertwined and fastened securely. His left ear pressed into the earth, muting sounds and unbalancing his hearing.

For a moment, he simply lay there limply, like a discarded rag, as his mind slowly puttered to life, connecting with all his limbs and rebooting his motor functions. His ears unsealed. The twittering of birds far away echoed in his eardrums, the vague hum of the wings of insects coaxed him back to life.

The gunk that had dried on his eyelids began to itch. Irritated, he pried at the substance that glued his eyelids together, loosening it in flakes that collected under his nails. A moment later, he forced his eyes open, wincing as strong daylight burned his retinas.

Blurry snatches of a lush forest greeted him.

He rolled over onto his stomach, crawling unsteadily to his knees. Cool earth pressed against his flaming forehead.

Harry waited a few moments for the throbbing achiness to subside, the sharp pulsing in his skull gradually lightening with each passing second. Eventually, he was able to keep his eyes open without fighting off a rolling bout of nausea.

He lifted his dangling head, surveying his surroundings through cracked eyelids. The previous blurriness sharpened into superb detail, hedging in splotches of blurriness and giving everything ultra-crisp lines. He blinked fuzzily, one hand going up to his ears, feeling for the legs of his glasses.

Instead, his fingers brushed against something soft and fleshy and pointed, distinctly _not_ the cheap plastic frame of his round glasses. His ears? His ears weren't pointed, though. What was going on?

It was too much.

The unexpected and unaccustomed sensory onslaught bombarding his eyes brought back the stomach sickness, and he dragged himself a short distance away to a humongous oak tree, resting his back against its trunk. He desperately hoped that he would not throw up.

He lifted one hand, examining it with critical yet baffled eyes.

His fingers were much shorter than he remembered them to be, and a slight bit pudgier—honestly, they looked like a little kid's hands—

A headache blindsided him out of nowhere, and he stiffened, his body instinctively folding into a brittle curl. His hands—his child hands—went up to his head, knotting those strange child-fingers in the black raven strands. Fat tears seeped from his squeezed eyelids, pouring silently down his face.

_It hurts!_

It was not a regular headache pain. It felt like sharp electric jolts running along his nerves in quick succession, and it shook him deeply.

Like the waves on a beach, the headache receded gradually, just like before, and Harry felt the strange urge to cry once again, because just the thought of that attack coming back sent little shudders rippling up and down his spine.

He wiped his eyes, sniffled a few times—why did he sound so high-pitched and congested?

He held out his hands again, fingers splayed, and let his sharp, glasses-less eyes roam over them, marveling internally at his eyes' sudden clarity.

Child-hands, the skin pale and soft, like a baby's. He turned over his palms, noting, with some degree of relief and simultaneous disdain, that his decidedly less famous scar—_I must not tell lies_—still carved permanent letters into the otherwise unmarked skin of his hands.

_But… how did I get it?_ He thought fleetingly, and then paused, perplexed.

He… couldn't remember.

It wasn't like the data had been totally effaced from his brain—if he strained, and ignored the subsequent rumblings of a headache, he could _almost_ recall it, and he certainly knew that he had gotten it doing… doing something, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember _what_.

_P—pink… something pink… and ugly…?_

It was a queer sensation, comparable to not being able to recall what you had for dinner yesterday, but knowing that you had certainly eaten _something_. Or maybe standing in a low bank of dense fog, and seeing the shadowy shapes that your brain forms to play tricks on you, but every time you turn your head, there is nothing there.

It was immensely vexing, and he, to his surprise, found himself crying again; big, fat tears that rolled slowly down his face and plinked softly on the grassy, lumpy forest floor. He dashed them away with his forearm, drawing in shuddering little hiccups of breath.

He was frustrated. And confused. And lost.

He looked around again, at the towering trees that seemed hundreds of feet high, at the underbrush that rose to his shoulders and above, and the grass, which must have been at least up to his knees.

Yes, most definitely lost.

He stood up on wobbly, stubby legs. His torso was, likewise, short, and not yet tapered into lean muscle by puberty. Which was strange. He had gone through puberty.

Right?

Again, details eluded him.

He stumbled clumsily back to where he had first awoken, noting the blackened circle that outlined the spot in which he had lain, the grass nearly lying flat on the earth, as if trampled by a great wind.

Not knowing what else to do, and feeling more helpless than he had in a long time, he sat down inside the ashen perimeter. Something hard prodded his bottom through the thin layer of soot, and he squirmed, fishing it out from underneath him—

A stick.

A smooth, polished, shaped and carved stick, longer than his forearm and thicker than his index finger. Somehow, he sensed that it held great importance to him—its significance rolled off of it in a positive aura, and he gasped quietly, holding it to his chest as he struggled to remember.

_Dark room… narrow boxes… excitement, nervousness… magic._

Magic! Now _that_ Harry remembered! He remembered it rushing through his veins, curling in his heart like a warm spark carried from a blazing fire, he remembered its helpfulness, its importance in his life. He remembered its contradictive darkness, its seductive, luring call, and the temptations it carried.

He remembered it protecting him, helping him, repelling evil.

It felt like—it felt like—

Home. It felt like home.

He clutched it awkwardly to his chest, and sat quietly, memories slowly, indiscreetly trickling away, like water rolling off a duck's feathers. Occasional ominous jolts flared, but none held a candle to the intensity of his earlier attack, which relieved him greatly.

_Magic. Magic. Magic. I can do magic. Magic. _He chanted this strange mantra over and over again, clinging to it as a man lost at sea clings to floating debris. It grounded him, centered him, and he knew, without a doubt, that this facet of him—this magical side—was truly devastatingly important, and thus he refused to relinquish memory of it.

…

Minutes later, he could not remember his name.

**.**

**.**

**AN: I understand that elfling!Harry is cliche, but dear heaven, I can't help but love the idea of him as an adorable, treasured little elf child. So no complaints about that, please. _My _biggest complaint with the idea is that authors seem to always take away his magic, which I wholly understand, but I want Harry to keep the one thing that shaped his character into what it is.**

**Also, there will be NO SLASH in this story.**

**Next Chapter: More in-depth of Harry's feelings.**


	2. Out of the Woods

**A/N: Thanks and much appreciation to all those who have reviewed and favorited this story. Please bear in mind that Harry has been regressed somewhat mentally, so don't be surprised if he cries occasionally (I have a 7-year old brother who cries nonstop) but I promise I'll try not to make him whiny (though he has every reason to be right now.)**

**ALSO, do you know how hard it is to write without mentioning the name of the main character? Urgh! Someone tell me if they see "Harry"anywhere in here. **

**Lastly, I have a couple elf-names in mind for Harry, but if anyone wants to make suggestions, feel free. (Just don't expect me to use them if I don't like them.)**

**EDIT: 9/21/13. Fixed up some grammatical errors, and drew out Harry's sickness a bit more.**

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**Visionary**

**Chapter 1: Out of the Woods**

**By- Dreams2Paper11**

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**.**

The second time around, he awoke rather slowly.

He found himself lying on his back in the center of blackened circle, as before, with the smooth stick held securely in one little hand. This time, he took his leisure waking up, preferring to stretch out his sore muscles first before doing anything else. He rubbed small fists into his eyes (encountering the same flaky substance from before) and yawned widely, revealing a miniature pink mouth.

Then he stood, and he pondered.

He did not remember his name, or where he had come from, nor why nor how he had gotten to be here, wherever _here_ was. He did not remember his age, nor anything personalized, like a favorite color or favorite food.

Oh, he knew it was all there, of course, all bundled up like a little present somewhere in his head. He knew he had once had a name, and a favorite color, and a favorite food, but since recollection had been blocked quite securely, he felt no need to sit and think himself up a raging headache.

No, he decided, it was time to move.

At first, as he hiked through the enormous forest, he used his stick as a walking staff (albeit a very short one) but that action's apparent wrongness soon became known to him, and he settled instead for slinging it over his shoulders and carrying it in this manner.

He very faintly remembered experiencing a horrible headache the first time he had awoken, but time and a good dose of solid sleep had soothed away those frightful impressions, and the cheery sunlight filtering through the thick green canopy overhead induced in him an alert and inquisitive mood. A spirit of restlessness had swooped upon his entire being, and every particle of his soul urged him to move.

He suspected, or rather knew (in that strange way he knew he had led a life before this forest) that there was something great up ahead; a turn in the path, a bend in the road.

Lured by this excitable sensation, he walked for sometime, until the sun had moved past the peak of its arch and had begun its sinking fall, the dying light outlining the broad leaves of the trees in gold. His clothes consisted of a simple green long-sleeved shirt that fell to his feet like an unshaped dress, and even past that, so that he often stumbled when he walked.

When he had come out of his sleep the second time, he had also been wearing some sort of pants, made of a heavy and dark blue material with neatly stitched pockets, but those had been much too big and he had kicked them off within seconds. In the left pocket, he found a broken, ink stained quill and in the right, a creased and worn piece of parchment, both of which he had kept with him, and he carried these same treasures now in his little hands.

At what he estimated to be three o'clock, he became aware of two painful realities—

1. His naked feet had scraped along sticks and sharp stones all day, and the soft skin had easily rubbed raw, little cuts from the thorns and the thistles drawing thin red lines into the otherwise creamy skin.

2. He was very hungry.

He rubbed his stomach wistfully as he trekked onwards, scrambling over huge fallen, mossy logs and lichen-covered boulders. He had seen bushes heavily laden with plump purple-blue berries earlier that day, but had not dared to eat any of the fruit. A strong instinct had screamed at him to leave the tempting plant alone, and he had obeyed.

He stopped more frequently now for breaks, and came upon a quiet little brook at around six o'clock. The water was clear and cold and shallow, running over a bed of smooth sandy pebbles. He hiked up his horribly unfit shirt and played in the brook for a while, soothing the cuts on his feet and treating himself to long draughts of the cold water. He also used the water to wash away the dried liquid that spattered his face. After being wetted, it stained his hands red, and he knew then that it was blood, but he could not recall whose it was nor how it had spilled all over him.

(Waking up splattered in blood was quite a scary thing, but as there was no one around excluding himself, he could not ask for help.)

He had tried to see his reflection—for he had no idea what he looked like—and had only managed to make out his darkened silhouette against the bright backdrop of the sky*, so he had to settle with feeling his own face with his small hands to get a rough read of it.

His hair was ink-black, wavy and extremely silky to the touch, tumbling from his crown nearly halfway down the nape of his neck and curling over his ears, which, as he had discovered, were unusually pointed. The bangs dangled in his eyes whenever they slipped from their place tucked behind his left ear.

His nose was small and turned up ever so slightly, and his skin was creamy pale and unblemished, taut with youth and vitality.

There was, however, one puzzling oddity.

On the smooth skin of his forehead, he encountered a wound—a thin, lightning-bolt shaped scar, hidden by his bangs. Most of the dried blood seemed to have originated from this point, and the enclosing skin was tender. Deep scratches, as if from nails, lacerated the surrounding skin.

He washed it carefully in the river water and tried not to think about its resulting dull sting now that it had been irritated from its cleansing.

When he felt fully refreshed, it was late and twilight was its final stages.

The adventurous euphoria from earlier faded with the dying of the sun, and as the warm golden rays dwindled, coldness replaced them. He shivered and wrapped the green tunic tightly around his small frame. His feet, still wet from the brook, were especially affected by the chilly breeze, and he drew them under his shirt to share in the feeble warmth that his body radiated, trapped by the tent of fabric.

When darkness had truly fallen, he was cold, hungry, and lonely. His nose had congested rather quickly, thickening his sniffles and adding to the misery.

"Hello?" He suddenly yelled, wiping his suspiciously watery eyes. It was the first time he had vocalized himself, and the sudden sound of his own voice nearly startled him. The weak cry seemed thin and tinny in the encroaching blackness.

Was that a monster in that patch of shadow?

Was that distant cry some hunting predator?

Was that the sound of a twig breaking underfoot?

He suppressed a squeak of terror and buried his head in his arms, shaking. His fingers anxiously kneaded the smooth stick of wood that he held against his chest.

In that moment, he felt overtaken by a deep sense of forlorn loneliness. Was he the only being in this entire world? He wanted company, or help, or…

… or a weapon.

The faintest, dimmest moment of recollection flitted through his mind, gone as quickly as it had come. Shiny silver, glowing red gems. A sword? A bejeweled sword?

_But I don't have a sword, _he reminded himself. His grip convulsively tightened on the wood when the sound of a strange insect rattled unexpectedly among the trunks of the great trees. _All I have is a stick… no… not a stick…_

Again, a very faint impression. A weak jolt snapped briefly in his brain, bur he pushed aside the pain.

_Not a stick… a w-wand?_

Duh. He gripped the ends of his hair tightly in self-exasperated frustration. Magic. He already knew he could do magic. So obviously, the stick was not a stick, but a wand. He laboriously untangled his hands from the folds of his tunic, holding it up in the darkness. His sharp eyes could see in the dark, though not as beautifully as they could in the daytime, and in such a solid blackness created by the canopy of boughs overhead and the deep night, he could scarcely make out the hazy form of the wand.

_What do I want? _He thought to himself. _A sword? A dagger? A club?_

He paused, fixating on the tip of the wand. The thought of a weapon in his hands sent tremors of misgivings through him, weighing down his heart with aching dread. A part of him suspected he had seen much violence before.

He looked out once more, unable to pierce the heavy blackness. A wind stirred the treetops, creating a raspy wordless whisper that might have been soothing in the daytime, but at night, it echoed eerily.

_I want… I want light, _he mused.

A slight tingle in his brain, but nothing happened. He gritted his teeth so hard that harsh clicks reverberated along his jaw.

_I want light!_

A stronger pins-and-needles sensation this time, and he seized the chance, pouring all of his loneliness and fear and frustration into the wand, shoving it, giving up the burden. A faint memory flashed, and a strange word leapt, unbidden, to his lips.

He whisper-yelled, following the instinct, _"LUMOS!"_

The pins-and-needles suddenly fortified into a steady tingly sensation, and he whooped aloud when the tip of his wand suddenly shone with bright silver light that illuminated everything within ten meters, effectively wiping out shadows and easing his formerly claustrophobic atmosphere. The tickly feeling rushing from his heart through his arm and fingers to the wand died off, but the soothing ethereal light remained.

He relaxed slightly, and slid sideways, curling up on the ground in a patch of long, soft grass, the wand snuggled securely against his chest.

_I'm still cold, _he realized a moment later, because while the beautiful silver orb hovering above the wand's tip provided plenty of light, it produced no heat.

Another brain-snap.

"_Mobila ignis," _he muttered, and, after a moment of lengthy concentration, small blue flames crackled into existence, resting securely in his bare palm. He felt the intense warmth from them, not quite scorching but certainly hot, and he marveled at how his skin remained untouched and unharmed. He tipped his palm, spilling the blue tongues of fire onto the patch of grass next to him, the bundle of green blades acting as a cradle for the floating brands of burning white-blue flame.

Now provided with warmth and light, and a thick layer of spongy grass beneath him, drowsiness soon pressed downwards upon his eyelids. He gave into the smothering sleepiness and dropped off into nothingness.

.

.

Two days later found him struggling through the forest at a much more sedate, sluggish pace. Weak with hunger and loneliness, he made hardly any progress. He followed the brook as much as he could, but eventually it curved away sharply to the east, and a driving instinct in him insisted that he proceed north.

(He himself did not classify his directions as 'north' and 'south'. That pushy feeling inside him spurred him to travel in a certain direction.)

Each night, he used the _lumos _and _moblia ignis_ spells for light and warmth.

_Now_, he thought crossly to himself as he pushed an obstructing bush out of his way, _if only I could conjure up some food._ Unfortunately, all attempts to remember a spell that would perform such an action failed him, and after overcoming the twentieth headache, he soon left the matter alone.

Over the span of his two lonely days, he had not seen another soul, not even animals, though he occasionally heard distant birdsong. The loneliness and unfamiliarity of his surroundings rattled him quickly, and he often talked to himself to fill the expansive silence. Even the language that bubbled and spilled over easily from his lips felt strange and foreign to him, each syllable elegant and smooth like satin. When he thought hard about what he wanted to say, he sometimes mixed himself up, stuttering fragments of what sounded like another language altogether.

On the third day, he caved in to his hunger and feasted on the plump purple berries that he found growing in thick clusters on the bushes that line small streams, suppressing the loud, innate sense that disapproved the action.

It only took an hour or two for these berries to make him violently ill, and colors suddenly seemed bright and overpowering, his environment warping itself in strange ways. Sometimes he saw apparitions that made no sense; ghostly shadowy shapes that made him sick with fear. Coherent thought escaped him, and he crumbled into primal instincts of flight, running, made oblivious through confused fear, through the woods.

Time had lost all meaning. When he regained himself, and the colors had faded back to normal and the hallucinations had vanished, and he could think semi-properly, the forest was much the same. He could have been in that state for hours or days.

His feet were badly scratched and bruised, as were his knees and elbows, due to the many times he had fallen in his daze. Thankfully, he still had his wand—it was clutched tightly in his left hand, and he exhaled loudly in relief when he realized how many times he might have dropped during his hallucination.

(He had, on the other, lost the broken quill and rumpled parchment paper.)

Fighting down the impulse to cry was difficult. The forest had been nice and cheerful at first, but it had gained a nightmarish quality as time wore on and he weakened. His skin felt continuously flushed and slick from humidity, and he tried to feel his own forehead for a fever (which didn't work. He didn't know that you can't feel yourself for a fever).

On what he supposed to be the third day, the trees began to thin out, daylight shining through the gaps in the trees. The undergrowth grew less thickly here, which sped his progress considerably, although he was soundly exhausted in mind, spirit, and body. Something had begun to weigh upon his shoulders, like an invisible burden, a threat of something ominous dangling around his neck. He couldn't shake the feeling that he didn't belong in this forest, and that he had places to be and things to do and people to help—

His ribs showed sharply though his pale, moony skin. Even on the first day he had awoken, they had been prominent, but most definitely not this badly. Gaunt purple shadows clung to the bottom of his eyes, swathing them in shadow. Sometimes the hallucinations came back in fits, though not nearly as bad as the first time, and he was able to keep some form of conscious thought when they possessed him.

He was tired.

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**.**

As the jaws of night enclosed over the land, he, at last, caught a lucky break.

He had been laboriously climbing a tall, wooded hill for the past ten minutes, and as he reached its crest, he moved to duck under a low-hanging tree branch. When his head bobbed back up, he glimpsed a merry cluster of twinkling lights in the far-off distance. Astounded, he simply stared, his primal eyes entranced by the beauty of civilization.

_A town, _he thought to himself, _that's got to be a town._

He stumbled down the slope, not removing his fixed eyes from the light in the distance, suddenly experiencing a childish fear that if he closed his eyes, it would disappear. He anxiously spun the wand in his hands, reminding himself that he had magic in case of peril. The overpowering feeling of relief made him heady. (Or maybe that was just the fever.)

An indeterminable amount of time later found him looking up the smoothed, painted wooden sign nailed on a tall, weatherbeaten post.

_Bree._

On the sign's right, an unpaved dirt road curved into the tight cluster of buildings and homes, branching out in smaller lanes. Deep ruts were carved into its packed surface, and muddy rainwater filled half of them.

He slowly advanced past the sign, unknowingly adopting a more lithe, graceful form of movement, his entire demeanor changing to that of one skillful in the ways of not being seen. After days spent in the woods with no proper protection for his feet, the dirt road, though occasionally flecked with half-buried pebbles that hurt when his heel struck them, was for the most part smooth, the dirt soft like silk. He avoided the puddles.

He passed the first structure—a low, one-story home made of solid oak logs, with a thatched roof and clay chimney. Smoke dribbled out of its top. Light flowed from its square windows. A rickety veranda wrapped around half of the building, wicker chairs propped outside the closed wooden door.

Many of the homes were built somewhat in this fashion, and he stared at all of them with awed eyes.

There were no people outside and about, and even if there had been, it is unlikely that they would have seen this slender shadow gliding silently from property to property. His keen ears caught snippets of conversation through open windows. Somehow, the knowledge of being near another soul warmed him from head to toe, and he barely stopped himself from barging into the first house he had seen.

_No, I don't know if I can trust anyone_, he thought to himself (a horrible instinct sleeping within him stirred at that and nodded its head in approval) and moved on.

And then he saw the Gate looming up in the distance. He halted, stared appraisingly at its massive structure. That same instinct that had been tugging at him during his entire duration in the woods beckoned him from somewhere beyond the Gate, and he gulped once, intimidated.

He approached, right up to within touching distance. There was a square little panel in the woodwork, and he could barely reach it even on his tippy-toes.

He gathered his mental strength, rolled back his sleeve to bare his knuckles, and gave three solid knocks.

The panel flew open a moment later, quite startlingly fast, and a man's face poked through. The child immediately noticed that his ears were rounded, and bit his lip, hurriedly arranging his wild locks of black hair so that they swept over the pointed tips of his own ears, hiding them from sight, however temporarily.

The man called something a moment later in a puzzled tone of voice, glancing from side to side, his eyes focused on somewhere above his head. The boy frowned, as the man's speech went in one ear and out the other. He could not understand a word of what he was saying. (He did not know that the man was speaking Westron, though he was told this later.)

He must have made a small noise of some kind, for the crabby gatekeeper suddenly looked downwards, pinning him with a somewhat startled glare. Another stream of babble. Lanternlight flickered off his pocked face, lending it a nightmarish quality.

A bead of sweat formed on the child's fair brow. He understood from the man's grave tone that he might be in some form of trouble, and he didn't want that. His fever flooded through him once more, an icy sensation rolling down his spine like the fingers of winter. He swayed, feeling sick and miserable and afraid.

"_Assumpta eritas." _the words spoke themselves, leaping from his lips, startling him as the sinuous feel of magic draped over him like a warm blanket. He just wanted to get in, he didn't want any trouble.

The man blinked, his eyes clouding slightly, and then removed his face from the square. A moment later, the gate's door slid open, revealing that it was not nearly as thick as the boy had suspected it to be.

Hesitantly, he passed the man, noting the relaxed shoulders and unhurried look as he closed the door after the child. The boy then retreated a few steps, stopped and looked, and then retreated a few more steps, deeper into the inner walls of Bree. A guilty conscious gnawed at him, and a moment later, he raised his arms, his fingers unconsciously manipulating the wooden stick in complex patterns.

"_Finite incantatem," _He muttered, once he had hidden himself safely under a wooden porch a hundred yards away. He could still see the man's wizened figure easily, and watched as he suddenly straightened, looking around in puzzlement, scratching his head.

He shook his head in wordless wonder at the power he seemed to wield, and then stole off once more into the night, weaving between the more solidly packed structures. From far ahead, a big building, built low to the ground and constructed of a mix of wood and stone, emitted a dark cloud of black fire-smoke from its great chimney. A stable rested in its shadow, playing temporary home to many steeds. He approached them first, smitten at first glance with their lovely dark eyes and glossy coats. They were well-behaved horses, and stood perfectly still, allowing him to lightly brush his fingertips over their soft coats. One lowered its arching neck, pushing its velvety muzzle into his tiny hand, and he giggled as its nostrils quivered delicately, a tickling sensation against his palm.

At last, though, he turned, and looked at the big building. Raucous laughter bellowed faintly from somewhere inside. The smell of wood-smoke laced together with a rich beefy smell, along with the separate, distinct smells of freshly baked bread and alcohol.

_Maybe I can stay here in the stables, _he thought wistfully, but could not tear his hungry eyes from the doorway. His stomach throbbed so strongly with hunger that he had to lean against the post of the stable for support, and saliva flooded his mouth at the many strange and wondrous smells. Another wave of dizziness rocked him, and his skin felt hot and flushed.

His stomach had made up his mind for him. He tucked his wand safely in his sleeve, still holding it with his hands hidden inside the fabric, and walked around back of the building, instinct telling him not to enter from the front door.

He passed the tavern's sign as he circumvented the building, noticing the crudely drawn image of a rearing pony etched into the painted wood. It read, _The Prancing Pony._

**.**

**.**

**A/N: **

*** I don't understand when authors have their characters look into rivers and get a perfect mirror-like reflection of themselves. I mean, whenever I've looked into a lake or a river, I can only see a darkened silhouette, with clarity depending upon the purity of the water. **

**Also, a lot of the Harry Potter spells have been described in the books, but the actual incantations were never mentioned. Thus, I took some liberties and invented a few. Mobila Ignis is a twist off of the latin form of "Mobile Flames", as in the blue flames that Hermione conjured in third year and kept in a jar. "Assumpta eritas" is a play off the latin form of "taken will", and it is the compulsion spell, NOT the imperious curse.**

**Also, the description of Bree and its gate may not be entirely accurate. I said before, I have not seen the movie in a long time. I just remember Frodo and company arriving in the rain, and the grouchy gatekeeper (who laters gets smushed by the Ring Riders who topple the gate, which, in my eyes, deems it quite flimsy.)**

**ARAGORN APPROACHES! :D**


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